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No pledges from Sweden on email snooping

Norway has received no assurances from Sweden that it will not monitor and record the country's phone and internet traffic, despite a high-level meeting on Tuesday.

Published: 4 December 2013 13:15 CET
No pledges from Sweden on email snooping
Demonstration in 2008 against the law allowing Sweden's Defence Radio Authority (FRA) to monitor internet and phone traffic - Henrik Ström
Norway's transport minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen on Tuesday met Catharina Elmsäter-Svärd, Sweden's minister for infrastructure, partly to air concerns raised by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US's National Security Agency. 
 
"I expressed my concerns to the Swedish Minister. We do not like the idea that Sweden's defence authorities bug Norwegian data traffic," Solvik-Olsen told state broadcaster NRK. 
 
But he said that he had received no pledge to end any monitoring activity. 
 
"We should be cautious about making demands of other countries,"  Solvik-Olsen explained. "When things go too fast, you hit deadlocks. The important thing is to find practical solutions that support Norwegian needs better than today." 
 
In 2008, Sweden brought in the FRA law, which gave the Swedish armed forces full access to Norwegian communications crossing the border into Sweden. 
 
As almost all Norwegian internet traffic is routed through Sweden, this allows them to monitor almost all emails and web searches. 
 
In 2012, Sweden's intelligence agency SAPO, and the Swedish police's National Criminal Investigation Service were also given access. 
 

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INTERNET

EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas

Brussels has approved a plan which will bring high-speed broadband internet to the almost 1 in 10 people in Spain who live in underpopulated rural areas with poor connections, a way of also encouraging remote workers to move to dying villages. 

Published: 15 June 2021 10:09 CEST
EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas
The medieval village of Banduxo in Asturias. Photo: Guillermo Alvarez/Pixabay

The European Commission has given Spain the green light to use €200 million of the funds allocated to the country through the Next Generation recovery plan to offer internet speeds of up to 300 Mbps (scalable to 1Gb per second) to rural areas with slow internet connections. 

According to Brussels, this measure will help guarantee download speeds of more than 100 Mbps for 100 percent of the Spanish population in 2025.

Around 8 percent of Spain’s population live in areas where speeds above 100Mbs are not available, mostly in the 6,800 countryside villages in Spain that have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to travel to Madrid on Wednesday June 16th to hand over to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez the approved reform plan for Spain. 

Back in April, Spain outlined its Recovery and Resilience plan aimed at revitalising and modernising the Spanish economy following the coronavirus crisis, with €72 billion in EU grants over the next two years.

This includes green investments in energy transition and housing, boosting science and technology education and digital projects such as the fast-speed internet project which aims to avoid depopulation in rural areas. 

It’s worth noting that these plans set out €4.3 billion for broadband internet and 5G mobile network projects in rural areas in Spain, so this initial investment should be the first of many.

Over the past 50 years, Spain’s countryside has lost 28 percent of its population as Spaniards left to find jobs in the big cities. 

The gap has been widening ever since, local services and connections with the developed cities have worsened, and there are thousands of villages which have either been completely abandoned or are at risk of dying out. 

READ MORE:

How Spaniards are helping to save the country’s 4,200 villages at risk of extinction

rural depopulation spain

The pandemic has seen a considerable number of city dwellers in Spain move or consider a move to the countryside to gain space, peace and quiet and enjoy a less stressful life, especially as the advent of remote working in Spain can allow for this. 

Addressing the issue of poor internet connections is one of the best incentives for digital workers to move to the countryside, bringing with them their families, more business and a new lease of life for Spain’s villages.

READ ALSO:

Nine things you should know before moving to rural Spain

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